On Sat, 2017-11-11 at 21:32 -0500, Larry Kollar wrote: > > Werner LEMBERG <w...@gnu.org> wrote: > > > > It's not about saving disk space. Remember that groff is an > > interpreted language *without* a translation to an internal > > representation.[*] This means, for example, that a comment within a > > loop with 1000 repeats gets parsed a thousand times, again and again. > > Ditto for not stripped-off leading spaces. Similarly, longer macro > > names take a longer time for being parsed. This can make a > > significant difference even today for operations that should be as > > fast as possible. > > Groff is, compared to most other formatting systems, blazing-fast. > When I was using it to format my documentation at work, on what is > now a 10 year old laptop, it made two passes through what became > a 700-900 page manual (depending on what was included) to produce > a PDF in less than 2 minutes. That included the Ghostscript run to > turn the 100MB PS file into a PDF. The book had many complex tables, > pic files, and EPS files. > > From that experience, worrying about a few milliseconds spent on > comments seems a little excessive. If not stripping comments can > streamline the install process, and make it easier for people delving > into the macro sets to understand what’s happening, I think that’s > time well spent. > > Larry
I really agree with Larry! Point well stated. Best wishes to all, Ted.
